Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 17

Hello everyone. I'm assuming that there's no one here because I'm a little bit early today. I have a very nice peppermint tea because it's getting quite late in the evening. It's been a while since I've done one of these streams, so I thought I'd answer some questions. I've got six, six or seven questions that have come through on the website, and I see there's a few comments in the chat already. So good opportunity, I guess, to get your comments and your questions in the chat. I will almost certainly have a chance to answer them. I am going to go on for about 1 hour this evening because it's Sunday night and I've got to be up early in the morning. I'm quite excited about Wednesday's live stream, doing it with Mark, uh, the Bush Bee Man. I'm gonna have to learn, uh, how to pronounce his surname because I'm definitely gonna get that wrong, but that's gonna be really fun even though it's at 11 PM on Wednesday night. Uh, we, we negotiated and tried to get a suitable time for both people and It's very difficult trying to get a suitable time for someone who lives in Australia. So 11 PM for me, I think it's like 7:30 in the morning for him. So we said 11 PM. So maybe you want to catch that one, catch up with that one a little bit later on. Right, so it's the first error. I'll turn my phone off. Okay, right, so questions. I'm going to go on the website first, answer some of those. Jim from Bees, great name, has answered 3 questions in 1. So I'll start with Jim, and some of them are easy to answer. So what's the, what's the most amount of nucs that I've ever shipped in one day? So the most amount is probably about 100. I have to ring up Royal Mail and say bring, bring the big van or 2 big vans because there's a lot of nucs going out. They're really good actually, they come to me at about 5 PM in the evening put me on the, the last slot of the day and come and collect the nucs and stack them up. And we're really close to quite a big— well, like our town's mailing center, we're quite close to, maybe 5 minutes away. And then they go off to Chester, which is a big hub, and then they go off to everyone else around the UK. And they ship out pretty quickly. Like, we— they leave us about 5 PM on, say, like a Tuesday or Wednesday, and then they start getting delivered from about 7:30 the next day. So they're kind of in the Royal Mail system for like between 12 and 20 hours max, and we've never lost a single nuc in the post. We've always got through, done well. So fingers crossed for this year, we're sending out lots of nucs. Uh, the next, the next question he asked there, is there a variety of bee that you have not kept that you want to? So I've kept these before, Lagustica, but I've never really run them properly. I'm going to have a go with some of my Lagustica this year because because from what I've seen from people sending me stuff of the ones that I sold to them, they said, oh wow, they're amazing, and showing me big massive monster frames of brood and really nice calm temperament. So I'm going to give— I'm going to give those a go this year. I've got to put this clip down, I'm a bit of a fidget, so if you heard any clicking there, that's me being a fidget. And this is probably my favorite question, and I've not really thought about this bit yet. So it says, if you could do anything differently with your business model again from the start, what would it be and why? So I started thinking about that before and didn't really get anywhere, but I guess what would I do? I probably wouldn't— yeah, no, I do know what I would do actually. I probably wouldn't focus so much on the normal journey of a beekeeper, which is build up your colonies and you do your bee maths and you think, well, if I've got 10 colonies, it'll earn this much, and if I've got 50, it'll be this much, and if I've got 100, it'll be this much. And then you, you're working out just kind of based upon the output of a hive, how much money you're going to make. And it seems to be quite simple like that. And then by looking at our business model now, and it's just honey's not, not where the money is. And the honey kind of sector at the moment is going through a difficult time, very difficult time, because people don't have that much money. And all of the bee— all of the beekeepers, but especially all of the bee farmers, are sitting on bumper crops of honey, probably dating back to 2020-21. There's a huge amount of honey sloshing around, and it's, it's difficult to, to sell it, difficult to sell it, and it's difficult to sell it in bulk as well. So doing something differently, I wouldn't— I shouldn't have focused on massive expansion so early on in terms of numbers. I shouldn't have focused on buying expensive machinery because it's it's not really giving me any benefit and it's holding a lot of cash sat in machinery. I guess the other view of that is that it's probably appreciated quite well, the machinery, compared to anything else that I might have invested in, which doesn't seem right. Machinery shouldn't appreciate, it should depreciate, but it's gone up by quite a significant amount. So that's what I would do. Right, next question. What are the challenges, if any, of mating a Buckfast queen with a black drone? And what are the difficulties of a black bee colony accepting a mated Buckfast queen? So this could be the easiest answer ever. No problems whatsoever for either of those. They kind of will all happily mate with one another. I don't think they're racist or anything like that. I know you do hear some people say that you can't get like a Buckfast queen introduced into a black colony of bees or vice versa. I've never found that. I've done that on a number of occasions as well. And, and you can see as well, you can see the evidence of that in that if I've got, say, like an F0 queen and then all of her daughters, you can see it on, on the F0 colonies that the daughters are just identical, absolutely like perfectly identical, like one color. And then if you let them go down to, say, an F1, then they'll go out, the daughter will go out and mates and come back, and then her offspring, you get like one that's orange and one that's really dark, and you get this kind of mixture in the hive. So in terms of matings, no problem. And then in terms of getting it accepted, no problem either, as long as you're getting it hopelessly queenless, which for me works very, very well. Then they will accept it because they've not got a choice. Um, I'll answer some of the things on here. Mark Guja, am I happy with my Ukraine-made Home neon light. Yeah, love it. I was going to do a separate video because the guy— I should have really done this by now— he put like a, a little card in when I sent it which was saying like, just thank you so much for buying this neon light. And it's great, don't get me wrong, the quality is way better than I expected. Very happy with the quality of it. But they were saying like, just thank you so much for buying from us, like you're supporting the war in Ukraine, like we're funding our Our brothers who are out there having this war, and it kind of yeah bring a tear to my eye. But it was quite poignant thinking wow, I didn't really hadn't really appreciated that. But the quality is great. I love it. I think it adds a certain je ne sais quoi. I wish you'd get it a little bit closer though. I'm still I'm still playing around with it. I might move it. But yeah, I am happy with it. Stuart Millard says hi Lawrence. What are your thoughts on starter strips drone comb and when to put it? So just refine that question a little bit. I'll answer it just without the drone comb bit. What are my thoughts on starter strips? I don't like starter strips. This is one of the things that I started off early in my beekeeping adventures thinking, not paying for foundation when the bees will give it to me for free. But I do think it is a false economy because you end up either losing X amount of honey for them to draw out the foundation, or you're just pumping it in through sugar syrup. So now I just pay for the wax foundation, and I pay for the wax foundation in the correct sizing, because the other issue that you get with adding starter strips is that you do get tons of drone comb, especially if you do it at the wrong time of year. So I did a video once showing the difference between when to add foundation, doing it early in the year, doing it late in the year, and doing it late in the year, if you add it in like It's a good time to do it when you replace them once you've done your honey crop and you've got your Apivar strips in and you're feeding, like back end of August. Great time to add foundation in and probably the best time to add starter strips in as well because they're much more reluctant to rear any drone brood at that point of the year. But I don't like them. Yeah, false economy for me. Hi Lawrence, what are your best tips on keeping your bee suits clean? That's a good, good question. Definitely not the best person to answer it though. Have you seen the state of my bee suits? So I sent a couple of bee suits back to VebeWear last year and they just said, seriously, that is the dirtiest bee suit we've ever seen. So I do, I am a bit better with them now and I would say the best tips for keeping it clean, just really simple, is just put it in the washing machine as soon as you get home. Don't let stains build up. So I do that now. I have a different bee suit for every single different apiary, and then I'll bring them home at the end of the day and wash them all. My wife washes them for me, she's very good. And then the next thing is to hang them out in the sun. So the sun is very good at stopping them going mouldy. Don't just keep them hung up at all times is a good one as well. Don't keep them scrunched up. You can use Vanish on them. Vanish is pretty good for keeping them clean and getting rid of any stains. I do, I know it's like I'm sponsored by the Ultra Wear suit, but it is just the suit that I wear all the time, so I do kind of know more about it. But I do love the Ultra suit in that you can pretty much wear it out of the washing machine. It's great, like take it out the washing machine, it just doesn't hold any water because it's just plastic mesh. You just shake it and put it on, and within 5 minutes of sunshine, it's just dry again. It's great. Uh, Stuart's refined the question, so he's talking about allowing the colony to draw out drone comb on strips or on drone foundation as part of mite removal. So again, I wouldn't— it's not, it's not for me, the whole mite removal thing, because I do think like colonies of bees need drones. We need drones if you want good matings. Drones are good, and I don't like culling drones to get rid of Farrowa when there's easier ways of doing it, in my opinion. So not for me. Stuart saying, I didn't get the question. I didn't get that at all, that you didn't say it. Completely different question to what you said at the bottom. So yeah, sorry about that, didn't get that one. Um, but it appears that Mark, Mark did get it. So that was— sorry, that was me. Right, I'll tell you what, I'll go away from the chat, I'll go back to the website questions and come back when I can, I can make better sense of them. So someone from YouTube, Kildaworld's Gundogs, has said he's just gone through his first winter as a beekeeper. He's cracked the crown boards on his 6 colonies today and most are stuffed with stores, at least half the brood, maybe more. Didn't go through the frames due to it being too early. The question is, is it possible to overfeed? So he's kept fondant on all through the winter And put some supers on to give more room, but he's concerned that he's going to get very early swarms. Should he swap some frames out for foundation at his next inspection? So you definitely can overfeed your bees. One of the, like, worst things you can do. And I do know and appreciate why you did it, and people think you want to give your bees everything, you want to make sure they've got enough food so they don't starve, and you don't think that you can overfeed them. And it is in the spring when you realize that it's very easy to overfeed them. So the risk and the damage from overfeeding them is that they've not got the space within the brood nest in order for the queen to lay up the frames properly, which means that you're massively restricting your spring growth. They do tend to work through it, but it can trigger early swarms. If it was me, what I would definitely do though is get— if you've got tons of frames in the brood box that are already full of stores, just get the foundation off on your next visit, scrape the frames off, the tops of the frames, get it nice and clean. And then the easiest way to do it is just double brood. Go double brood with some foundation frames and put your foundation frames above the brood nest. Take the frames of like feed, the frames of stores that you've got, take them out, bruise them, put them in the middle, kind of like a checkerboard, in the middle between your best 2 frames of brood. And what they'll do is they will work those frames, they'll move it upwards, which is what bees love to do. They'll relay the frame of stores up with eggs, and then they will use that, the energy from those stores, to draw the frames out above them. So great for getting frames of foundation drawn out. That is what I would do if you don't want to go double brood. Putting supers on is kind of a recipe for disaster because all they're going to do is they're just going to start working those frames of stores and Moving it upstairs because they want space for the queen to lay. So it kind of fixes the swarming issue a little bit, but it means that you are going to end up with winter feed up in your supers, which is definitely not what you want. So the other thing that you said there, should you swap out some frames for foundation at your next inspection? Yeah, but that would be my— that would be the last resort for me. I'd prefer to get a good frame of— good box of like frames of foundation on top and then you can do something with those frames at a later date. And that will work with supers as well if you want to just do it with— if you've got supers that are not drawn out, use that as an opportunity to get them drawn out. Every inspection, bruise up the frames, put them in the middle, and then you will— your colonies will do really, really well if you do that. Right, drink some more of my tea. Afternoon, my bees are going mental. Brood box is full, or bees on 2.5 frames of stores and the rest is brood. Last week he put a super on and they're even working 6 frames of that. Wants to do a split and he says he sees that I have queens available but it's still a bit cold in North Hants. Would you wait for a few more weeks before doing a split? So, oh yeah, I've done a video on this, um, and it's on— it is on the members section. So if you are a member, you would have watched this video already. And it's titled How Early Can You Do a Split? So I won't, I won't give it away too much just because then people won't watch the video, but I would say you're getting close to the point where you could do a split. It comes down to the temperature, but more really like the status of your colonies, the amount of frames of brood. If you've got there— what's he got there? Um, like 7 frames of brood. And the box is full of bees, I would say yeah, you could do a split, go ahead. But probably, probably about a couple more weeks, I would. Uh, next question from Stephen Lee says, what process do I use to make soft-set heather honey, and is soft-set heather the only type of heather you sell now? So I tried loads of different ways of doing this. I really wanted to get like a nice— like, I love heather honey, but I wanted to get a set, like a smooth set heather honey. And I tried it loads of different ways, tried the dice method, getting a nice seed and trying to get that into the heather. And because it's like thixotropic, it doesn't work quite well, doesn't seed as well as normal runny honey does. So the process I started to do then was I thought, well, if I blend in maybe like 10 or 20% oil seed rape honey, like creamed, all nice and creamed up, then that will kickstart it and that will get it going. And that didn't work either, that just went kind of like crunchy. So what I found now, the best way— and it is still a little bit temperament— temperamental, this offset honey— what I do now though is I get it up to about 50%, so it's pretty much 50% oilseed rape and 50% heather. And the only way that I found to do it properly is to, to get the oilseed rape in the creamer, Get it going around nice so it's actually like fully set, warm it back up again so it's not, not liquid but it's like movable, and then to blend in the heather honey. And then normally if I was doing a soft set, I would heat it back up to runny again, so like 40 degrees Celsius to get it to jar. And I find doing that with a heather honey kind of resets it for some reason. It doesn't, it doesn't set smooth, so I don't take it up that hot. I take it just to the point where I can run it through the bottling machine, but it's still coming through like quite creamy. And then I found that works quite well. So we do the Sausset Heather, and then we have our normal heather as well. So we have 2 types of heather honey. Um, and then the final question that I've got on the website, it says, morning, I'm new to beekeeping. I've had my bees just under a year. They were very friendly and worked hard to stock their new hive. When the few warm days came in the last few months, they've been busy flying in and out. During that latest cold and wet spell, they have all died. I lifted the lid and it's full of honey and the queen is dead, sat on top of the frame alone. Any ideas what I have done wrong? I'm gutted. So sorry to hear that, Barry. It is, it is the worst feeling in the world, especially if you've only got like one or two colonies, opening them up and finding them dead like that. Without pictures, it's hard to say exactly what it is, but I, I would hedge my bets The majority of these instances here where you see you've got like a cluster of dead bees and they're kind of like just frozen in motion, they couldn't keep themselves warm. I'd say 9 times out of 10 it's failed mating, and that you'll get like a colony going into winter and they either supersede, or much more likely you've just missed a swarm somewhere and they've gone out and there's a queen that's maybe gone out and got mated and started laying eggs, but she's just not mated very well. And then when they— when push comes to shove over winter, she just can't lay the right amount of eggs. And the majority of the times I see this with my bees, you do see a little spotty bit of brood, as in like drone brood. So it's really obvious then when you see a couple of spots of drone brood there, and that the queen is trying to lay some eggs to build the numbers up to get them to a point where they can overwinter, and she's just struggled. And then depending on how well decomposed the bees are, you can pretty much identify when that happened. I've just done a video again on the membership section that's coming out soon, which is like a postmortem of a hive that died, and I reckon they died in September, maybe September, October. Like, I genuinely don't kind of go into my bees much once I've fed them and got them up to weight. I'll do a heft and that's pretty much it. I don't, I don't go messing around. late on in the year like that. But there was just nothing there, pretty much abandoned, and I would say that was failed mating again. So that is all the questions done, so I'll answer questions on the chat now. I'll go to the bottom. Mark Guja says crunchy heather honey is heaven on a spoon. It's funny, I said this on the previous stream about Wainwright's and Marks and Spencer's marketing for crunchy heather honey. Genius marketing, but I can't stand heather honey. Crunchy heather honey where it like properly crystallizes, the biggest crystals. I'm really not a fan. Uh, Angus says, how do you become a member? Couldn't find it. And what do you get and where do we join? Okay, so if anyone wants to become a member, if you go on to the home page and where it says subscribe, there should be a little button next to it that says join. Uh, you do— you get early access to all of the videos. So I think there is like 30 videos on there at the moment. So my— the way that I do my videos, I'll do like 15, 16 videos in a day, and then over the next 2 or 3 days I'll edit them and upload them all to the channel in the member section, and then I just drip feed them through to the channel. It's the only way that I can— I can manage my channel because I— because I work full-time. Uh, you also get all of the videos at advert-free. So I have the choices to whether to put adverts on or not, and when they're on the members bit, you get them all advert-free, so you haven't got much adverts. But it's good, you get the bit— you get the videos at the time of the year when stuff's happening. So like the video, the video I did the other day about bees starving in March, I did appreciate the irony that I'd, uh, released it to the public on the 31st of March, but it had been on the channel for maybe a week or two before that. Uh, Will says, good evening, are you planning or have done any BBA, uh, BBKA learning modules, maybe becoming a master beekeeper? So no, and I definitely will not be doing any of them because I really don't enjoy— I don't enjoy learning in that fashion, and I don't enjoy doing exams. It's just not for me. But I've got nothing, nothing against them. I know some people do, do like doing exams and do like learning things, but I just know it's not for me to sit down and learn. I'd much prefer just to be out messing around with the bees. How late in the season can you wait to do your first inspection when the weather doesn't get above 10 or 12 degrees? So I've pretty much inspected like 80% of my colonies now. I've been out there and done it. Like, I'll go out in the middle of winter when it's 2 or 3 degrees, like below zero, and pop the crown board and stick some fondant on. If you've got big massive bubbling colonies of bees, like, they can deal with you messing around with it when it's 10 or 12 degrees. Just choose the warmest point of the day and just be as quick as you possibly can. And I always say, like, don't inspect your bees unless you've got a genuine reason to go and inspect your bees. And I would say getting into the point of the season where there are swarm risks is a really good reason to get in there and do your first inspection. But also, the chances of losing a swarm at this point in the year is very, very low, but you will start seeing it. I predict Easter weekend, if we get a little bit of sunshine and it hits like 16, 17 degrees, it's going to be loads of swarms because the colonies are building up, like my colonies are really, really strong, I'm going to have to go out and start doing supers. And then the other thing I would say is just if you don't want to do an inspection but you're worried your colonies are getting too big, then just go and put the supers on. It's not that cold out there at the moment, and if your colonies are massive, they're generating huge amounts of heat. So just get the queen excluders on, get the supers on, give them some space. And if you, if you go there next week and they're just completely full in the super as well, you know you've done the right thing. If you go there and they've not touched it, then you can maybe take it back off again. But there's nothing worse than putting supers on and then taking it back off again. So maybe sit on your hands for one more week. It does look like the weather should be getting nice at some point. Uh, Mark Spiking says, what's my thoughts on oilseed rape honeycomb? as he's not seen anyone doing it, so thinking it might be worth doing it. Um, so it's— I like, I like your entrepreneurial spirit, but I think the reason that no one does it is that it sets in the comb within like a day, and then it's just concrete and you can't get it out. So it would be like chewing on a bit of concrete. So, so I wouldn't— I would not do that. I would be extracting all seed rape honey. Uh, says, when am I going to be making my first splits? So I've changed my management technique of my colonies completely. I used to make splits early on because I was doubling my numbers up, but I try at the moment to reduce the numbers, or at least maintaining my numbers. So I don't make splits from my production colonies. I try and keep them going, and I'll build them up to a point where I've got a single brood box, queen excluder, 2 supers. And at the point where I get most of my colonies to around that point, I do my demerace. I do my first round, so I lift the brood box up to the top, add a new brood box in underneath, and that buys me like a couple of weeks. And I tend to do that like depending on the weather, maybe around the middle of May this year, maybe a little bit late later, maybe 20th of May, something like that. And I go and do that on all of my colonies, make a bit of a judgment call to say the majority of the colonies are at point that I want them to be. So I'm going to do it on all of them. Some might be a little bit late, some might be a little bit early, some might be perfect, but then it means that it's quite efficient, an efficient use of my time. So I don't make splits, I do demerets. So Jerry Murphy says he has 2 nuns, 2 nuns of honey, possibly from heather at the back end of last year. Would you recommend feeding this back to the bees now? Or what would you do with it? Not set up for spinning out heather honey, right? So it's a waste, isn't it, giving it back to the bees? If you're not set up for spinning it out, you could just like scrape it out, crush and strain it. It's surprisingly good. I did a video on this one. I don't think I actually did it with the— no, I didn't do it with the heather in the end, did I? But you can buy on Amazon like a potato ricer, really good, really cheap. like £15 stainless steel potato ricer, which is like a little clamp thing, and just cut the honey out and put it through the potato ricer, and you'll probably get like 90% of the honey out. And then just sieve it. It's a, it's a bit of a pain, it's a little bit messy, but you'll get the honey out, and then you can just melt down the wax. If you're not going to do that and you want to keep the comb, then yeah, feed it back to them. Stick it in the middle, bruise, bruise the wax cappings, put it in the middle of the brood, and they will gobble it up. Very nice. Oh, I have to— Dan's reminding me to not forget my tea. I'm so bad, but it's still relatively lukewarm. Peppermint tea, very nice. Robert says he hopes I'm well. I'm very well, thanks, Robert. Have I tried scraping my heather frames into my capping screw, and does it work? So I think I've tried like every iteration for heather honey, really have. So yes, I have tried that, and the first thing that's very difficult with heather honey, or any honey for that matter, but specifically heather honey, is like scraping it back to the midrib. Well, it's difficult on its own because you keep on like busting through the midrib of the foundation, and it is really, really annoying. Hence why I've moved over to the frames and feeders for this year. I'll do videos on that. That's like a fully molded plastic frame and foundation all in one, so I'm going to get like a hard plastic scrape to go down on there. I've just seen that someone's given me a £20 tip. Oh, it's, it's Walker Bee Punch. That's very kind of you, thank you very much. I'm gonna have to invite you on here now. This is, this is the way to get in for a video. That's very, very kind, thank you. Well, what are you— made me lose my train of thought now. So scraping it down, I'm going to get like a plastic scraper to go on the frames and feeders, uh, and get all of that honey out. Going back to the question though, have I done it in the capping screw press? Yes. So I've done it in the capping screw press and it does work, but the problem that I've got with it is that it's just the worst honey in the world to filter, and the capping screw press doesn't give you filtered honey. Like, it's a good way of getting like the dregs of the honey out of the wax, very good at that without any heating. But what it's not good at is giving you like clean filtered honey. So if you were going to use that as your process, you'd end up having to have another process on the back end of it to filter it. And this is the exact reason why I've moved to a hydropress, because when I had my hydropress, it was great. You put the filter mesh round on it You scrape the honey in, and so it's a little bit more work up front in terms of scraping, but probably not that much versus chucking it in a loose-ener. But what you get out at the end of the hydro press is honey that can be sold like it's ready to go because it's gone through such a nice fine mesh, perfectly filtered in the bucket, and then you can just run it through your bottling machine without any further filtering. So my last batch of heather honey which had gone through the loosener, so it had gone through the loosener and been tangentially extracted, that I filtered that and jarred that up the other day, and it was just— it took me so long to filter it. And I kind of thought, well, what's like— what do I want here? Do I want a good end product, or do I want my process to be as quick as it can possibly be? And I realized that I'm probably ending up with a better end product using the quicker process. So I would— would I recommend— just going off on tangents— would I recommend the capping screw press and scraping heather frames? No, I wouldn't. It's not an efficient process, and you end up having to use another process as well. Jerry Murphy, he's got a very natty channel member badge. Hi Jerry, thanks for being a member. He says he has 3 hives, the bees are quite aggressive, he would like to replace the Queens. What's the best way to do this, bearing in mind I would also like to split the hives? And he loves the Q&A sessions. So I do think my favorite, um, method now for splitting hives like that is such a good method. And I remember there's a guy who joined— if you're not on it, definitely join it, this is just constant promotion— but the No Nonsense Beekeeping Facebook group. A guy joined it recently who I recognized his name. His name is John W. Chesnut, I think. I think that's how you pronounce it. And I do remember he's on— he's very active on Beekeeping Techniques, and I posted a video on there once. And this guy, when you— you get some people like Shad Morgan who just— people will laugh when they hear that name— that just abuse people on like Facebook comments. But this guy, uh, John, you can tell from his comments that he's like knows everything in a good way, like an incredibly knowledgeable person. And he looked at one of my videos and said, yeah, so that's an all right method, but have a look at this method instead. And I commented and I introduced a new video on the basis that this guy showed me this method. So this is the method that I would recommend, and have a look on the channel, there will be— there is a video on this one, which is what he didn't like is that I had to go through all of my colonies when I was making splits and I find the queen. And he said, that's just a waste of time. You can make it— you can make a perfectly good split without finding the queen. And I kind of thought, how do you do that? And he told me how you do it, and it was— it is the best process ever. So I'll start stringing it out now. It's like, it's like it's a real YouTube video, waiting for the— waiting for the good bit. So you get a colony of bees, you go in, take out the 4 open frames, trying to get like 4 or 5 open frames of brood. Don't go for the capped frames. You want to just get as many open frames of brood as you can possibly get, take them out, shake all the bees off, shake every single bee off, and then take them out and then put the queen excluder back on the brood nest, and then put an empty brood box on top of the queen excluder, and then put those brood frames back in, all in the middle, all on the side, but like they're just as close together as you can get them. if you're using it on like a DM4 spacing, just put them on the normal spacing and then put the roof on. And then what that does, you come back, you can come back in 20 minutes, half an hour, but what you can do is you're doing that en masse, you can just do that on all of your colonies. Go to the next one, go to the next one, go to the next one, do 20 colonies like that, set them all up, go and have a cup of tea, and then when you come back, what's happened is that all of the young nurse bees have have migrated up through the queen excluder to go and tend to the open brood. And what you've got is just a perfect split. Like, it is perfect. You've got brood in all stages, you've got young bees, lots of young bees, and you know the most important thing is you've not got the queen. So then all you do is just take that off, stick it in a nuc. If you want to add Another frame of capped brood, I would. You want to kind of balance the number of brood frames— pardon me— in a nuc. Preferably you want more capped brood in there, but you can do that. You can pinch that out the bottom and then make sure they've got enough stores as well. And then you can just make your splits, you can add your queens, and your original colony just carries on as normal. And you just backfill the space with frames of foundation. So there we go, that is how I would do it. Um, Dale Hancock says hoping to pick these nucs up in a few, uh, in a few weeks and has 2 full national hives brooding, 2 supers. He's picking up extra brood boxes and supers in April and May. Will I have enough time with what I've currently got? So yeah, be fine. Don't, don't do what, uh, Rob Tallis did and, and get, uh, a nuc in April and then get to August and have them on double brood and 7 supers. I say don't do that, definitely do do that. That was amazing, uh, from in one season, 2 brood boxes and 7 supers full of honey from an April nuc. But I do think that if you— yeah, you should be fine with that. So pick it as long as you get— somebody asked me this question the other day, which was how many supers should I have? for a hive, and we work on the average for Nationals, it should have at least 4 supers. And that gives you like a little bit of flexibility in that if all of your colonies produce 4 supers of honey a year full, you'd probably be happy with that. But it means that you've got a little bit of flexibility in there to maybe extract some and to move them around. So 4 is a good benchmark, but I wouldn't say you're going to be hitting 4 supers before the end of May. you're probably going to get to a point where you get the June gap in there, and then the summer is when you're likely to get more. So as long as you get them in by the summer, you should be fine. Can you make a video where you show how to handle the hive in late winter, early spring? You're talking about checkerboarding frames with food, double brood, etc. So I could do a video about that, but in terms of What we do in late winter and early spring is we literally do nothing, absolutely nothing. The checkerboarding video, I know you're supposed to go in in December or January and make your manipulations, but I did that as a little trial to see if it worked, and it did work. Okay, it did work really well, but I don't think I'll be doing it religiously because it's, it's a bit unfair because it did work and I probably should try it again, but it's it's not for me really going in messing around with colonies in December and January. It just doesn't feel right. So my management of colonies in late winter and early spring is just leave them alone, heft them occasionally, heft them. I don't ever really go in. And, and now that we're into the first week of April, I have gone around, I have checked. But even at this point of year, all I'm doing, I'm kind of like trying to satisfy my own curiosity a bit, but it is more for like We need to not balance, we need to understand what we've got, what's there, what's worked, what's going to die. So I'll just like open up a box. Yeah, right, it's full. You can see when they're fine because the box is just completely full. So if I open it up and just see a box full to the brim with bees, I'll just close it back up again. If it's like half full, I'll probably be thinking, okay, there might be something wrong here, but I'll pull a frame out and if I see brood in all stages, I'll think, okay, Okay, it's fine, it's just a smaller colony. Or if I see one that's, say, like a third or a quarter full, I'm thinking that's not looking good. And then you open it up and you find spotty drone brood, then you know it's going to be a drone layer. You can make a decision on what to do with it. Uh, Josie says, how late in the season can you wait to do your first inspection? Oh, sorry, I'm answering the same questions. I've answered that one. Well, I'll go down to the bottom. Ivan says, "What do you think of the 20 frame electric extractor at Thorns? Can't remember the brand, but begins with a K." So it's Conaghan. It's it's difficult to say this because, and again, it looks like I'm sponsored by Abello because I only ever talk about Abello extraction equipment. But it's only because it's the the extraction equipment that I've got. I would love to be able to try. Like tons of different extractors and buy them and try them out. I know a few people who have got Conaghan extractors and got really good things to say about them, but I've never, I've never tried them. Walker P. Rhymes saying 114 people but only, uh, 27 likes. That is a great time to get the advertisement in, thank you very much. If you enjoy this stream, please do hit the like button, uh, it, it does help out with the algorithm. It's very kind of you to say that. So in terms of the Conaghan extractor, though, I have not tried it, so I can't give you like an honest opinion, just say, yeah, it's great, go out and buy them. But I do like my Lyson stuff, and I still— I'm so excited about my new Lyson extractor coming. It's weird, it's the little things, yeah, that annoy you with extractors. So the thing that annoyed me with my other extractor And it probably won't annoy other people, but it's on the top, you've got these Perspex lids, and on one side it opens and on the other side doesn't open. Like, there's no hinges on it. And it really annoyed me because what I wanted to do was like put it in a position where my frames come along one side, I get to the point where I do my extraction, I put the frames in the extractor, and then I wanted to take the frames out of the extractor. The other side, there's no hinges on it, so you had to like walk around in the extraction room. And like, it's just like the most meaningless little point about an extractor, but it really annoyed me. So I made sure the next one that I bought has got these double hinges, which is— it makes my life a lot easier for my very unique and personal circumstances. We have the same extractor, very nice. So we bought the 30 frame last year, so it is good, the 30 frame. It's an 800ml drum. It was the same drum that I had before And but I had it with a 6-frame swing cage in there as well, which meant I lost 6 frames when I was doing like 90% of my honey, which was radial. But I'm, I'm very excited about getting a new one. There's nothing better than like shiny extraction equipment. Have I invested in an instant VAP? Yeah, he bought one. Bit pricey, but so much easier and quicker than a gas VAP. So yes, I do have one. I've not got around to using it yet. I did my kind of Christmas vaping with my Sublimox, which I still like. I like the Sublimox. I know it's still got a cable, but it is good. It does work well if you get it on a good generator. But it's, yeah, the InstaVap is really good. I'm very excited to use it next year, and I bought a new suite of 5 amp-hour batteries to go with it. Oh, Walker Bee Ranch has got like the most awesome set. If people here haven't subscribed to Walker Bee Ranch, it is a really good channel, so I suggest you go over there and subscribe. He's saying that he's got the 1500mm uncapping tank and the Taper Top Steam Uncapper. To be interested to see what— how you like the Steam Uncapper. I, I had a go on that and I, I struggled with it a bit, but I think it was more to do with the fact that my frames weren't like protruding enough Uh, so maybe it was that, but it is cool. It's a nice design with a little V-shaped cutter. I do like it. Uh, says, evening Lawrence, thanks for answering your questions. No problem. Am I any closer to buying a farm? So I couldn't be further away from buying a farm, and it's like the biggest weight off my shoulders. So we're not buying a farm, done. Definitely not. It's not happening because the prices— prices just got a little bit silly. but we were looking at just crazy prices. And then interest rates hit, and we were just thinking if, if interest rates go up to what, to kind of near where they've actually ended up, we just wouldn't be able to afford it. So we're not getting a farm anymore, which is— I'm quite, I'm quite relieved about, I have to say. For someone right at the start, would you recommend 14 by 12 or other brood setup? Oh, and he also likes the heather honey. Thank you. Thank you very much, Grant. Now that is, that is a difficult question, that one, because I've tried— I've got, I've got loads of colonies on 14x12, and at this point of the year, 14x12— I do, I do really like 14x12 at this point of the year. It's fantastic. It's funny, I can give you like a calendar or like a, a graph of the year of when I like and dislike the frame types. So at this point of the year in March, you, you cannot beat the 14x12 in the UK. Because I don't need to feed them. Like, you're going around, I'm hefting them, they're fine. If you look on the side, they've got like full frames still of honey on the sides, absolutely tons in there. I didn't even have to feed them that much because they took all of the late season feed down really well and then had the ivy to, to boost their stores. So you can just leave them alone back end of winter— I'm sorry, back end of like the summer when and they're, they're backfilling with brood and backfilling with stores again, you just leave them on their own. I see people on Twitter, mostly Chris Manton really, that's, that's all the only person that I really pester on Twitter, and he has issues. Like, he runs single nationals into winter, and single nationals kind of at this point of the year, you could be struggling because you've just not got enough stores. They'll just burn through the stores really, really quickly, and you're thinking, well, What's going on here? Need to put some food on, or you've got to hope for the flows, and then you get yourself in a little bit of mess. So back end of the season and early season, I love my 14x12s, and then all of the rest of the time, I absolutely hate them. I really do, because they're difficult to use, they're big, the lugs break. You've got like really big lugs on a big heavy frame, so they break so much more than the National Deeps, but especially Langstroth. Langstroth lugs never break. And then the problem that you have is that you're rarely going to run like a double 14x12 brood setup. And then if you're doing a demerare, the 14x12, it's impossible nearly to lift them up that high. Like, if you've got a box full, it's like 60, 70 pounds. Trying to get it above your head is very, very difficult. And then you don't want to, you don't want to waste so much honey by doing it on a double brood. So you're limited to a 5— limited, I've just watched that on there— you're limited to a single brood box, which means that management is very— is like loads more difficult. So would I recommend it to anyone? I would say no, and I would recommend above that a double brood national. I do think that's the best that you're going to get in the UK. If you're not in the UK, I would just go with like a single-proof Langstroth. I think that's probably the best. And then if you need to double up, you can go, you can go double. But I wouldn't— no, wouldn't recommend 14 by 12. Uh, right, gonna go to Kill the Dogs. Said it so wrong. I'm, I'm tired this evening, you can tell. I'm just not getting my words out. You have to say if I'm saying it right. Kaido Wilds Gundogs. I'll get that right. It says, do you have Aussie rape near me, and if so, how do you make sure it doesn't set in the frame? In my first year, I was too slow and lost my honey as it set. So I do have Aussie rape near me, but I don't keep my bees anywhere near it. So if, if I go to it, I just take my colonies to it. So it's quite handy, but you just, you need to be on it. People say back end of May is when they go and do it, and it will depend on where you But I think as you get in, you'll get to know roughly when it's ready to go. If you're going in and it's all capped over, you've left it too late. You should be probably extracting it when it's like no more than 80% capped, and you could probably get it down to like 50% capped as well. The shake test is always a good test. Like, as long as it's not shaking out, then you're pretty much good to extract it. It's quite a low moisture content as well, so it's quite difficult to get it to start fermenting. But you do just— you'll get a feeling of it. You're better to take it out a little bit earlier than a little bit late. I love all-seed rape honey, though it's not some people's favorite. They say it's a bit too sweet and tasteless. Mem, who comes from where I used to live in Eltham— I don't ever come back to Eltham, I I've not been to Eltham for like 15 years, but I do, I do work in Canary Wharf quite a bit, so I am down in London. What's the best extractor for me? Max will be 5 hives. It's gonna be like the most cop-out answer in the world. I really wouldn't know what to suggest. 5 hives, I'd almost be inclined to just have like a manual extractor. I do like an electric extractor. If you can afford an electric extractor, go for one of those. I'd be tempted to just kind of wait in the off-season and see if you can get like a secondhand one. Secondhand one would be good, a better quality secondhand one. They're expensive, aren't they? Even like the— I look at the, the smaller extractors, like when I went to the beekeeping show, and you look how much they cost versus how much honey is going to go through them, and I just think You're much better off just getting like a much bigger one, or like go into your association and, and trying to get your association to maybe buy one. Like if you do 5 hives, you could extract 5 hives in a day easy, really easy. Like I've done, you can do like in a good setup 50, 60 boxes in a day or in an evening even. So that's probably, that's what I would suggest is go and speak to your Association and see if they've got one. If not, get them to buy like a decent one and then see if they'll rent it out to you. But I won't, I won't recommend one that I've not personally used. Mama says, "Is it right time for frame inspection and when should you add the super?" So it's getting there. It's it's difficult to say because if you're in Scotland or USA or Dorset is going to be different, but if it's 15, 16 degrees and the bees are flying and it's April, go for it, get in there. And when should you add the super? Kind of when the box below is full and, and it's, and it's clearly warming up. I wouldn't be adding supers if it's like -4 at night still, but if you're getting to the point where it's 15, 16 degrees and the colony is full, then I would, I would also add the super. Um, Joe Murphy again says from his earlier question, did you explain how to requeen the aggressive queens after you do the John W style split? Apologies. Okay, yeah, so no, I didn't. So it's one of those ones that is— no one likes to hear— it's kill the queen. You just have to go through it and kill the queen. Wear 3 sets of gloves. If you can't find the queen, the other video is how find the queen, which is shaking them through a queen excluder. That does, that does work surprisingly well. So you can take the entire colony that's remaining with your evil queen in it, take it away from the site, as in like, I don't know, 3 or 4 meters away from where that beehive was, put a new beehive on the site and set it up with like a brood box and then a queen excluder and then another brood box. So you've got like a shaker box, and then put that open brood Find some open brood, shake all the bees off, and put that at the bottom of the box. And then you shake in all your bees through that shaker box, and you're using like the exact same mechanism, which is that bees want to get to where the brood is. So you'll see them all just kind of going down like that, trying to get to where the brood is. Queen can't get through. You find the queen, kill the queen, and then they're queenless. Leave them for 8 days, they'll draw out queen cells. Knock down the queen cells. Then they're hopelessly queenless, and then you can requeen them. It's not nice, but if you've got horrible bees, then there's no other way of fixing them, unfortunately, other than to kill the queen. I'm out of breath. It's not good talking too much. Right, Grant says thank you. He's in the UK, so we'll go double. And he wants to know where I get my gloves from. Yeah, I remember there's a comment on that. I need to put the link on for where I get them. And I have to say, those gloves there, somebody rang me up or like messaged me on Facebook and said, oh, can you do like a review of our gloves? And I do get a lot of these. I get a lot of these from China at the moment, which is, can you review like this face, uh, this like makeup brush? I'm like, well, no. But this woman here was really nice and said, oh look, we'll just send you like a selection of all of our gloves and you can just have a play around with them. And then she very kindly sent me like a full massive box of those gloves. So I've been using those for ages and they are the best gloves ever. They are so good. And that is like, that is genuinely my opinion. I'll be buying more of those. They are great because they're so thick, but they're cheap in that they're— you can like, they can be just chuck them away once you finish, which I know, I know is, is really bad for plastic waste, but I've become so paranoid about spreading disease, so I'm just cleaning them up really good. But they're thick, so they can tolerate being washed, and like in washing soda, and they go all the way down, like right down to there, so you don't get any stings through them. They are the best gloves ever. After doing a demaray, what would the, uh, what would be the brood size I can go down to over winter, i.e., with a super or 2 of honey stored in a double brood? So if I've interpreted the question correctly, like in terms of the overwintering configuration, I go down to a single brood box. But if you're doing it with national deeps and you've got— you end— you'll end the year with a national deep at the bottom, loads of supers, and then a national deep at the top. If that top box is tainted by Apivar, you can't extract it for honey. So all I do at that point it is take that top box, take all the supers out, and then I'll leave the top box of honey on the top because that's how bees like to set themselves up for winter, which is all of the honey above the brood. They start at the bottom and they just work up like that. And you'll find at this point of the year, if you're on double brood configuration, they're generally in the top box now. The bottom box is just empty, there's just nothing there because they've worked, they've worked all their way through it. So that's, that's what I would do. Dale says if he was to sell his honey to a local shop on a small scale, what hoops do you need to jump through for health and safety standards? And so, so not, not that much, to be honest. You, you just go to your local council and just register as like a food seller. They'll come and do a check So they're quite stringent on the checks, and then they'll issue you with a food hygiene rating. And if you just Google like how to get a 5-star food hygiene rating, you can download like all the templates and stuff. So obviously you want to get your 5-star, and then you need to do like a Level 2 food and manufacturing hygiene course, which again, if you just Google that Level 2 food Food Manufacturing and Hygiene course, something like that. It's like an online thing and it costs like 15 quid, doesn't cost much. And then you just have to— it's just like an online training course, I think it lasts a couple of hours. And then just with those 2 things, as long as your honey room is compliant and your labeling is compliant, you can sell in shops. So Ed Butler says Hi Lawrence, question regarding making soft-set honey from oilseed rape honey. After liquefying the honey to get it to the creamer, how hard do you let it get before turning on the churner? So that, that's a really good question. I, I go a different way. If you, if you liquefy it and then turn on the churner immediately, you whip the honey and you end up with like loads of froth. But I, I don't let it go set because if you just let it go set, you can't turn the churner on. Just, it like freezes. It's got a— my one has anyway, it's got like an auto safety mechanism to stop you burning out the motor, which I think I would probably do. So I do it as soon as I see it starting to go. So imagine if you've got a big churner full of liquid honey, like properly liquid, liquid runny honey, just leave it, don't turn it on. As soon as you see it start to go viscous like that, and you can just test it by turning it on If it's just flying through with no resistance, turn it back off again. If you can see it's starting to work that motor a little bit, that's when I turn it on. And also, the speed function on my creamer never goes above the lowest that it's allowed to churn at. So for the Lysun one, it's 25%, and it's really slow, but it's got so much torque that it just gets through it. And you're not trying to whip it, you're just trying to churn it. And I see, I do see it on Facebook, some people like properly going for it, whipping their honey up. And I'd love to see the end result because I know what happens when I do that on mine, and you end up with like 6 inches of honey froth that you just can't do anything with. So as soon as it starts to set, turn the, turn the churner on the lowest speed, and then I turn it off when it's struggling, as soon as it's struggling. And then a jar directly out of it. So Robert says, when doing the Demerara split, do you need to worry about extracting honey from the brood frames if you used Apivar? So yes, mentioned that before, you definitely can't extract honey from the brood frames if you used Apivar. However, what you can do is put that box directly underneath the brood box, bruise all of the frames up completely, and then put a super above it. And I know it sounds like, well, you just kind of— it's the same honey, but that is exactly what's going on with, um, in a normal hive. Like, if you use Apivar in the late season and you take the Apivar out, bees come in and they'll store all of the nectar in the brood nest, and then they take it up overnight. So it always goes through those frames anyway. You just can't extract out of the frames. It came to the The beekeeping show, and they were saying that like the Amatraz has a negligible impact in terms of storage on the wax anyway. But you legally you can't extract out of the frames. But that is that is a good way of doing it if you if you don't want to let them overwinter on a double brood. That's a really good way of getting the honey back out. So Shaggy, right name Shaggy says how hard is it to catch a wild swan? Any tips on how to look for wild bees? So I feel a bit bad about, about this answer because I used to sell swarm traps and used to recommend putting dark combs up in swarm traps, and it is the best way to catch swarms. But I do like feel a bit embarrassed about how irresponsible that was. And, and I guess it was because like I just thought, well, my bees aren't diseased. Like, I get, I get inspected every single year by the bee inspector and I never had any disease, so there's no disease risk here. And I do look back and kind of think, well, that was a bit naive because people watching the videos might not have not had disease. So that's how you catch them. Definitely don't recommend it though. And since we've had our case and cases of EFB, then there's no way that we would ever be doing that anymore. So I wouldn't put frames in there, but I would say that you could put like Foundation, foundation in there would help. But for super frames, it's probably maybe like halfway house in terms of a disease risk. I, I don't think that you're going to transfer too much disease by doing that. But again, it's not something that I would do, not something that I would recommend. I would say lemongrass is the way to do it. Get the box the right size, bait it up with lemongrass, and fingers crossed and hopefully best. Uh, Tony and Teddy's Bits and Bats, again great name, wants to requeen one of his 20— one of his colonies this year. They have a 2019 queen, they'll probably supersede her this year, and you'd rather introduce a queen of your choice. When should you do it? So if you do have a 2019 queen and they've not superseded her yet, she's definitely still there and they've not swarmed, and then they do supersede her this year, that's a really good colony of bees. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't potentially kill that queen and introduce a new queen. I know I can see your logic, but if you, if you think, if it genuinely is a 2019 queen and they've not, um, they've not killed her, they've not superseded her, they've not swarmed, they're a good colony, disease-resistant survivors, Tolerant to varroa, and they produce a decent amount of honey, and they're a nice temperament— maybe speculating a little bit there— and then they do supersede, like, that's a great trait. It's a really good trait to have in that you're not going to get— you're not getting swarmy bees, you're kind of getting supersede bees. So I'd see if they supersede and monitor them. And if you're doing weekly inspections, just have a look because they probably will try and swarm. But if they do try and supersede at any point throughout the year, I would let them supersede and see what the queen comes out like, and then give her 6 weeks, a couple of weeks to see if she mates, and then if that doesn't work, then kill her and introduce a new queen. But I would say give her a chance. Again says she's in the UK. If you had supers now, would they be okay without feeding them? So I can't say that because I don't, I don't know how much stores they've got and I don't know where you are. But I know from my own personal experience that putting the supers on and then it getting cold and then taking the supers back off again is, is the biggest pain in the world. So I'd always err on the side of don't put your supers on if you think that they're going to be at risk of not being able to sustain themselves, and wait until, you know, there's blossom on the trees and it's warm and you can see the bees flying and you've got like a nice sustained or a prolonged spell of good weather before putting them on. Right, I'm just going through, uh, the rest of the questions here. So we've been on for— we've been on for an hour. My wife has, has left me at home on my own until like Wednesday, so I just carry on and go late into the evening. I think Feckless just joined as a channel member. Thank you very much, Feckless. So he says, hi Lawrence, do you still use mini mating nucs or Apideas, or can you talk us through how you go from virgin to mated queen? You saw your reviews on them, but we'd love to see you using them. So I do, I do use a few of them. I have to say, my, my favorite, my personal favorite now is the 6-frame. So the, the BS Honeybees 2-way splits with the good dividers in. I bought all those mini mating nucs, and I do, I do kind of play around with them a little bit, but I just— my system just doesn't work with it because I just don't have the time to mess around so much with stocking them up. And you, you've got— it's quite labor-intensive, whereas the BS Honeybees with the divider is just so easy to use, and it's on my frame size, and it means that I can just go through, do a full round of grafting, get my queen cells, and then within the same apiary I can just load the queen cells up into those 2-way 6-frame nucs on the same frame size. I can put the right amount of bees in, put the right amount of brood in, add my queen cell, and then because they're so big, you can get so much stores in there and you can feed them at the same time. It's just, it's the easiest thing in the world, and you just come back and they're mated. So they are a bit more expensive, quite a lot more expensive, but I think on a relatively small Scale, they they are the easiest. Jerry says, "When would I recommend? When's the best time to requeen? Can it be done too early?" Oh, there's my light. So yeah, I do think it can be done. It can be done too early, but we're getting to the point in the in the season where it'd be fine to do it at any point from now onwards. Once the once the queens are available, it's fine to. Go in. What I would say, if it's too early, would be going in and doing it in, say, like February, and you're thinking, well, you're going to go and do it— turn that light off, the strobe effect— but as long as there's— as long as you've got access to good quality mated queens, then that's the risk factor gone. So you could definitely be too early trying to requeen if you're doing it naturally, and you do see a lot of people do that, maybe do like a walkaway split in March, just think, gonna have half a colony of dead bees. Well, I'm just going through the comments, right? So Robert says, do I equalize my honey colonies? So I used to do loads of equalization, getting them all up to the right point, and now not a single frame transfers from one hive to another hive ever. So they'll only ever go into clean, newly cleaned, or new boxes. So if I'm doing my splits, but no, I don't equalize anymore. Do I have a shop? He's going to town with the kids and would call past. That's very kind. No, I don't have a shop. I do need to tweak my Google Business Profile because we do get people turning up here occasionally. And I had— we had a couple turn up once and they, they were so angry. They'd driven for like an hour and a half. They'd driven for an hour and a half to come because they wanted to bring their kids to a honey farm, and they were so annoyed that, A, we were just a house, but also how could they, how could they possibly tell the kids that they can't go and meet some honeybees? And it was supposed to be like an all-singing, all-dancing honey farm. They must have mistaken me for someone else. But they were really, really angry and they just said, this is completely unacceptable. And I didn't quite know what to say because it was like, what can I do? You've made a perfectly honest mistake here, but I can't rectify it. Like, you can have a free jar of honey if you like, but that's about the best that I can do. And they left and they were very, very unhappy. Leanne says she wants to say thanks for my video. She's been in a rough patch and my videos calm me and teach me so much. That's very kind. I'm glad, I'm glad that they— you find them useful and they're calming. Even when I'm getting stung in the face, maybe not so calming. Um, ah, right. Tony and Teddy's Bit says that on that queen, the super siege one, so you're assuming she's 2019 and she's aren't green, but they're the bees that you caught in the swarm last year. Okay, right, so that, that's slightly different. So that's, that is an, an old colony that has swarmed. So yeah, um, just whenever you feel ready, just dispatch her, uh, because she will almost certainly have another go at swarming this year. That's what they, they tend to do when they get that old and dwindle down to nothing. So yeah, go whenever you want. Hi Lawrence, I'm in the the UK, South Wales. Hives overwinter beautifully, but they start to get honey-bound. I must have fed them too well. And then, is it too early to put supers on, or should you take some full frames out? So I did— I answered similar question at the beginning, which is if you've got empty boxes with frames of foundation, so undrawn frames, like, it's perfect way to get them drawn out, whether they're brood frames or super frames. Take the frames of stores, take them out, bruise the cappings, so you're just like scraping down the wax a little bit just to make the honey underneath accessible, put them in the middle of the hive, split the brood frames, and what the bees will do is they'll work them, they'll replace the honey with eggs and brood, they'll move, like, they move the energy upwards, so they don't necessarily store it upstairs, but they'll turn it into drawn comb, so you're making the best use of the resource. That's what I'd recommend. Uh, Tony Belcher says, what nuc would I recommend for national frames? So my 2 favorite nucs are the Abello nuc, but my favorite is the BS Honeybees nuc, uh, because, because of the ability to split it. But if you are getting the BS Honeybees nuc, you do actually have to get the, the metal divider. Comes with a Correx divider, which is the worst divider in the world. I'm sure the guys there won't mind me saying that, but they offer like an add-on kit for like an extra tenner, and it turns it from like a really good product to a perfect nuc. So make sure that you get that additional metal divider. What's the biggest mistake I've made with my bees? I think transporting them and not putting ventilated screens on And then them collapsing and dying is, is pretty hard to take. That's like, it just makes me feel so bad because it's one of those things you think, oh look, it's only been like half an hour in the back of the truck, they'll be fine. But when they go, in terms of like a collapsing colony because of the heat, they go so quickly. And it's just, they work together with this organism to fan and make sure that everything's kept at the right temperature. temperature, and then as soon as it just goes a little bit too hot, they lose the ability to do that because they're getting like sticky. And then because they get sticky and they lose that ability, more honey and more wax melts. So, so you get this real exponential curve like that. So it happens so quick. So I've had a colony half an hour in the back of the truck just completely killed every single bee. And you do feel bad because that's, that's not on anyone else except me. But we've not had any like big dramatic errors of anything else. It's never nice when you smash a honey bucket. I had that recently where you put a honey bucket down, I stacked them up like 5 high, and what must have happened is like a bolt or something had must have got stuck to the bottom of it. I don't know, no idea where it had come from. So they were just in storage. And I stacked them back up again, and I've gone in, it's just honey everywhere, like absolutely all over the place. So that annoys me when you're mopping up honey. Not good. Uh, Robin says, have I seen the price of the frames? Uh, frames and feeders, yeah, they did go up. So I think what's happened is they've become VAT registered. I might be wrong. But they are expensive, but they save you a lot of time. Um, but I think— I do think they're fully waxed from my memory, but the bees don't— they don't take to it the same way as like wooden wax. We'll see how we get on. I've got loads of them, about 300, so I've got loads to have a play with this year. So Chris Ford says, what are my other favorite beekeeping YouTube channels? So I'll be perfectly honest, I don't watch loads of them. Like, I do, I watch like a bit, but I don't sit there. I'm not— I've just not got the time to sit there too much and watch that many. I watch my favorite YouTube channel, is a guy called Ed. It's not Beekeeper, called Film Booth, and it's all about how to be a YouTuber and edit your videos, which, as you can imagine, is quite good for me. I do like the Bush B-Man. I'm going to say that as a shameless plug for Wednesday night's chat, but he is— I like his style. I like the way they're edited together, and I like the topic as well because he's just a bit mad. Um, who else do I like? I, I like it. I like Ian Stepler's stuff. I do like that because it's just right straight to the point. There's Yeah, I'll leave it at that. I don't watch that many. Oh, I've got down to the bottom of the chat. Why, this is, this is crazy. Right, I'll give it, I'll give it another 15 minutes max, um, and then I will stop. Right, question from Leo Ellis. If you want to get your questions in, I am at the bottom, so I'll answer them straight away. Uh, it says, have you ever put drone comp in the supers? I'm guessing that's like foundation to stop the bees from putting pollen in them. So no, but I have put drone foundation in the supers because they reckon you get like a little bit more yield if you put drone foundation in there. And I do like it, but I always find that the bees, they like work it at the very end. They'll always do the worker combs before they get to the drone combs. But I've not noticed them not putting pollen in there, so that's, that's a nice observation. Yeah, and that would be very beneficial. Because it is annoying when they put pollen up in the supers and then you start having to balance stuff in the extractor. Right, I'll have a flick through. I think I must have missed some questions there. I can't, can't have got to the bottom that easy. Again though, if you've enjoyed this video, uh, this live stream, please do hit the like button. It definitely helps out with the algorithm. Just have a look, any, any other questions? If there's no other questions, we will call it a night. I'm just going through the comments. I'm a typical man, I struggle to do like 2 things at once, so trying to talk and look at— oh, here we go, we've got a new comment. Right, Tom Belcher, why don't you leave a super of honey instead of spending money on syrup? So like, it's a good question. But a super of honey, let's say it's £30, maybe let's call it, it says £20, be like conservative. For me, that's £20, which is like 40 jars. And then we'll wholesale that for, call it a fiver a jar, that's £200 worth of honey. And I'm going to replace that with like £20 worth of syrup. So it's kind of as simple as that, that I can make 90% more on the honey than I can by saving it on the syrup. And, and I do genuinely think that the bees don't— the bees aren't fussed because they've still got loads of honey, like natural honey, in the brood nest. And for like an overwintering feed, like a natural sugar syrup's really good for them. It's just like quite, quite simple, doesn't upset their stomachs like some natural honeys can anyway. So that is the reason. And also there is a little byproduct reason in there as well. It makes sense, is it? But by taking the honey away and feeding them at the end, you're boosting the colony at that point of the year where you might not normally get a flow, which for me, you do tend to get better overwintering. And I'm not saying it's directly as a result of that, but I do like that last feed. And then you're going in, you're getting to a point where you're treating them with the Apivar, And they're still expanding that brood nest really late on, which means you get big colonies going into winter. And for me, it is that simple: big colonies going into winter equals big colonies coming out of winter. Jerry says, would would I recommend to build hives to be on a double brood or single? If double brood, would you double brood them over winter? So if you're on national deeps, I do think double broods the way to go as long as your bees can cope with it. The reason we moved away from double brood is that we were losing just like a little bit too much honey in the brood nest, but it probably wouldn't bother me that much anymore. That was at a point where I was trying to eke as much honey out as I could, excuse the pun, but that was the reason why. But definitely like the main benefit for double brood is leaving them on that configuration over winter, so they've just got loads of stores. So it's, um, it's, it's a good— it is a good configuration, very flexible configuration, great for making splits, great for doing any type of swarm control, great for when there's like a dearth and they can't get any food, great for going into winter. How did I get the Bush Bee Man to do a live stream with me? So I just messaged him. and said, would you like to do a live stream? And his son, uh, got back and just said, yeah, why not? And then we tried to agree a time. It took ages trying to agree a time, but it's, uh, he was really nice, his son. I had a chat with him today. I think it was like 9 o'clock over there in the evening. It was like midday over here or something, but I'm excited. It should be fun. How are you getting on? How are you getting on with your Anel Beehive. Yeah, I maybe like said it wrong for YouTube, but still, Anel, it's a— come on, what a brand name, Anel Beehives. And if you— I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna have to Google it now because there is something on their website. If you go on to it, they've got like a tagline. Let me see if I can find what their tagline is. It's probably gonna like kill the stream. We do It at the same time. Oh yeah, it's that and it's the Annell Honey Park, and I read it as like the anal honey park, but it's just my mind's twisted. Maybe it's probably not as funny in Greek. Let's let's say it that way. Right, Leanne says, "How okay are you on relocating a bee barn at this time of year? Should you wait for later?" So in terms of like relocating an apiary or the colonies, it's, it's a bad time of the year to do it. Like, it's so easy to do this in winter when they're not flying. You just pick everything up and move it and it's done. At this point of the year, you do need to follow the strict rule of 3 feet or 3 miles. Um, it's a pain. I know it is a pain, but you just got to find— get other apiaries that are 3 miles away and then works well. Uh, Ivan says, what about Richard? No. Yes, I forgot about Richard. I do watch Richard's and, and enjoy his videos. He's a very nice guy as well. Uh, I'm just going to call you Gundogs from now on because I just can't get the first bit. Gundogs. All right, so Gundog says, what's my favorite breed of queen and why? So I do love my Buckfast queens, I have to say, and it's purely down to temperament for me. So like all of the other benefits that you get with Buckfast queens— gone into like sales mode, sorry— but like prolific brood, lots and lots of honey, low tendency to swarm, uh, not that much propolis. Like all of these things that are all true, but I'm not that fussed about. The one thing for me is the temperament. And I know, no, you're not gonna it's not like a silver bullet. You add one F1 Buckfast queen and then your colony is going to be calm for the rest of its days. Like, you will get regression, but you'll get regression because not everyone's using calm bees. It's kind of as simple as that. And I know a lot of people don't like Buckfast bees, but I— this isn't a case of me being sold something and just saying, oh yeah, this is the best. Like, I genuinely have tried like all of the local bees. I've tried AMMs, I'm trying AMMs at the moment, although a lot of people weren't happy with my data set of one, which again I accept as a fair challenge, but at least I'm trying a data set, at least I've got one colony that's AMM to try and compare it to. But the Buckfast, I go back to the Buckfast every time because they give me everything that I want, they give me lots of honey. They're really nice to work with, low propolis, big colonies. The only negative that I can really think is that they take quite a lot of feeding, but they only take quite a lot of feeding because I take their honey away. Like, if I just left them to it and said, oh, there you go, you make do with your 150 or 200 pounds of honey that you've stored up over summer, I reckon they'd probably be all right. But when you take it away, they do, they do need feeding, and they've like, they've been put together to go and collect the amount of honey that they need, and then beekeepers take it away. So I do like my Buckfast. Says, Lawrence, we used to make all our nucs with that method. Surprising how quickly the nurse bees repopulate the frames. So he's talking about putting the open brood back in above the queen excluder. It is, isn't it? It's like 10 minutes and they are just completely all over it, and it's like the perfect amount of bees to make the split. I might do that video again. I'm going to do a few videos again that I've done because I just, I feel a bit dated and maybe could need a bit of slow-mo action. So I might do that one again because it is, it is a good video. Oh, Gundogs. Oh, I'm going to call Gundogs Nick. Hi, Nick. Uh, Leanne says thank you for the answer. We've been setting up some butterfly gardens the past year. Our beekeeper left and we've got a new one that wants to relocate. Okay, yeah, 3 miles away then. Uh, Robin— Robert says if you find multiple colonies swarming, can you put queens in cages and swap and treat as if you've made a split? So it's very, very difficult once they've started to go and swarm. They're just gonna go. Like, the absolute best thing you can do is— I've done this before— if you find them swarming, if you find cells, first thing I try and do is find the queen. Find the queen, get the queen in a cage, and just put her in your pocket and just use her for something else. Go make a split at a later point, knock them down to one cell. You would have heard, I think it was Stuart saying it the other day, that he's a fan of using just one cell. was just nodding along, couldn't, uh, didn't say much, but I fully agree with that. Whenever they're swarming, I don't agree with leaving 2 cells. Almost certainly going to get them sending out the swarms. So I just, yeah, if you find them swarming and you find swarm cells, knock them down to 1 swarm cell once you found the queen. If you find the queen first, always good. So there we go. I think, I think that's it. I'm going to call it a day there because I've got to be up for work tomorrow. But I hope everyone enjoyed that. If you did enjoy it, final shout out to give me a thumbs up if you liked it. And then a final reminder that we will be doing an 11 PM slot— that's like 40 minutes later than now— um, with Mark the Bush Bee Man on Wednesday night. So hopefully you can join us there. So I'm not going to answer any more questions now because I've already started my, my closing announcements. But I do, I do hope you've all enjoyed it, and I hope you have a really good, uh, and very rewarding 2023 beekeeping season. So good night, everyone.